Hauran

HAU'RAN (caves, caverns), a country east of the Jordan; the north-eastern boundary of Palestine, Eze 47:16, Eze 47:18, and the Auranitis of the Greeks, and now known as the Hauran. For situation of the country see Map at end of this volume. History. — Little was known of the Hauran previous to 1854. The works of Porter, 1855, Graham, 1858, Wetzstein, 1860, Burton and Drake, 1872, and Selah Merrill of the Am. Pal. Explor. Soc., 1877, have thrown much light on its extent, nature, and history, but a thorough exploration of the country yet remains to be made. When the Israelites conquered the land, the whole of this region appears to have been subject to Og, the king of Bashan, Num 21:33-35; Deut 3:1-5, and a large portion of it was allotted to Manasseh. The district would then include the Argob, the slope of the Hauran Mountains, where the Israelites found 60 fortified cities with walls and gates and a fertile tract. See Bashan. In the Roman period the country was divided into 5 provinces, Ituraea, Gaulanitis, Batanaea (applied also to the whole region), Trachonitis, and Auranitis. The ruins scattered over the region are very extensive and remarkable; those built in the caverns are regarded by Wetzstein as the most ancient, and possibly reaching back to the times of the Rephaim, Gen 14:5; Gen 15:20, and Deut 3:11. The villages are chiefly of stone houses, having gates and doors of large slabs of dolerite; the gateways of the larger buildings are ornamented with sculptured vines and inscriptions. The Arabs, according to Wetzstein, from near Yemen settled in the Hauran at about the beginning of the Christian era; later, a second immigration from south Arabia took place, and these controlled the country for five centuries, and they probably erected most of the stone buildings now in so good a state of preservation. A large number of inscriptions in various characters are yet to be deciphered, which will throw much light, no doubt, upon the ancient history of this wild region. Wetzstein states that the eastern section of the Lejah and the slopes of the Hauran Mountains contain at least 300 ruined cities and towns. Selah Merrill says that an important ruin is found in every half hour of travel, and that among these ruins he has himself visited and examined 60 ruined churches, and eleven of thirteen theatres, including one vast naumachia where mock sea-fights were held. And he concludes a paper read before the American Geographical Society in New York, Nov. 8, 1877 (Bulletin, No. 5), with the following remarks: "In every age previous to the Moslem conquest in a.d. 635 — running clear back to the time of the giants — this land has been thickly inhabited, generally by intelligent and wealthy people. Churches, theatres, palaces, temples, castles, baths, porticos, splendid roads, a multitude of inscriptions, remains of a perfect system of irrigation, historical notices of cathedrals, bishops, and a widespread Christian influence, notices of conquests and vast spoils falling into the hands of the victors, authentic notices of many successive and powerful races that have flourished here, and the surface of the whole country dotted with ruined towns, cities, and villages, — are convincing proofs that the statements found in the O.T. respecting the numbers of their armies and people may be accepted, so far as the capacities of the soil for supporting such a population are concerned, as the literal truth." See also Argob, Bashan, and Gilead.